The Execution of Alex Jeffrey Pretti
By Tony Pentimalli
By now we've all seen the videos of Alex Jeffrey Pretti being beaten, disarmed, and shot to death while holding only his phone. His execution by Trump’s Federal Gestapo in Minneapolis marks the moment the United States crossed fully into authoritarian rule, where civilian life, truth, and law no longer restrain state violence.
We have all seen the multiple angles. Unedited footage. Cellphones raised against a freezing Minneapolis morning. Ordinary people recording what they could not believe they were watching unfold in front of them.
Six, seven, eight masked officers surrounding a man who was holding nothing but his phone.
We have seen the naked aggression the moment Alex Jeffrey Pretti lifted that phone to film them. We have watched them shove him. Pepper-spray him. Drag him backward. Slam him onto the pavement. We have watched one officer yank a handgun from his waistband while his hands were already pinned beneath bodies. And then we have watched them shoot him again and again at close range while he lay immobilized on the street.
There is no ambiguity in the footage.
There is no missing context that rescues what happened.
There is no lawful version of this story.
This was not policing.
This was execution.
This was political violence carried out by Trump’s Federal Gestapo.
On the morning of January 24, 2026, in Minneapolis, those Gestapo units tackled and killed 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a U.S. citizen and ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital, a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry, a registered nurse licensed through 2026, and a legal observer who was filming their operations near 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue.
Pretti was not running.
He was not threatening anyone.
He was not pointing a weapon.
Multiple bystander videos verified by journalists show Pretti directing traffic away from a chaotic enforcement scene and then moving toward another observer who had just been shoved to the ground by Gestapo officers. Witnesses say he was trying to help her get back up when the agents turned on him.
Video shows Pretti holding his phone in one hand as he steps toward the woman who had been pushed down moments earlier. He appears to reach out to help her as officers surge toward him. An agent sprays pepper spray directly into his face. Another grabs him from behind. He is dragged backward off his feet and slammed onto the pavement.
Gestapo officers surround Pretti, striking him as he tries to keep his head from hitting the ground, piling on top of him as he struggles to breathe and orient himself through the pepper spray. Footage shows one officer removing a handgun from Pretti’s waistband during the struggle and walking away with it.
Seconds later, the gunfire begins.
A single shot is fired. Pretti’s body goes limp beneath the officers. He stops moving.
Then the gunfire continues.
He dies on the pavement beneath a stack of Gestapo officers.
This was a controlled killing of a man who had already been neutralized.
Within hours, the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement claiming that Pretti had “approached Border Patrol agents with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun,” that he “violently resisted” as officers attempted to disarm him, and that “an agent fired defensive shots.” DHS added that Pretti “also had two magazines and no ID” and concluded that “this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
It was a lie from top to bottom.
Video verified by major news outlets shows Pretti holding a phone, not a gun, when Gestapo officers took him to the ground. No footage shows him brandishing a weapon. No evidence shows him firing at anyone. By DHS’s own account, the struggle centered on taking his firearm. DHS later said the weapon was recovered and in federal custody at the scene.
So the question that burns through every official statement is unavoidable.
If the gun had already been taken, why was he shot?
There is no answer that preserves lawful use of force.
There is no answer that preserves good faith.
There is no answer that preserves even minimal moral coherence.
And then came the cover-up.
Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension was blocked by Federal Gestapo units from accessing the scene. When BCA investigators returned with a signed judicial search warrant, they were still refused entry.
That is not cooperation.
That is not a jurisdictional dispute.
That is federal power announcing that it no longer recognizes state law, due process, or civilian oversight as binding.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed suit that same day seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent DHS from destroying or altering evidence related to the killing. A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump granted the order immediately, citing the “astonishing” departure from normal investigative procedure.
Federal officials have refused to disclose the identities of the Gestapo officers who shot Alex Pretti. They have concealed the names of the men who pulled the trigger.
Local police did not participate in that cover-up. They released truthful information about Pretti, cooperated with investigators, and did not attempt to hide the shooters behind federal secrecy.
Before any independent investigation could begin, the Trump administration went all in on a single narrative: Alex Pretti was an assassin.
Stephen Miller labeled him a “domestic terrorist.” Pam Bondi went on national television and blamed sanctuary city policies for his death while reading off unrelated crimes committed by undocumented people. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem amplified the same framing. Donald Trump posted photos of the legally owned gun and extra magazines, insisting this proved murderous intent.
None of them addressed the videos.
None of them addressed the fact that he was holding a phone.
None of them addressed the fact that the gun was taken before he was shot.
None of them addressed the fact that he was pinned under a pile of Gestapo officers when the bullets entered his body.
They did not rush to judgment.
They executed a script.
These four people are not commentators on a tragedy. They are co-authors of it. Miller supplied the ideology that treats civilian dissent as terrorism. Bondi supplied the prosecutorial propaganda that reframed execution as law enforcement. Noem supplied the bureaucratic machinery that blocked investigators and seized evidence. Trump supplied the authority, the funding, the protection, and the narrative absolution. Without that chain of command, Alex Pretti would be alive.
DHS announced that it would investigate itself, even though it had already issued a false public summary of events. The federal government seized the scene, blocked state investigators, withheld the identities of the shooters, and attempted to control the physical evidence before any independent inquiry could begin.
This was not a tragic failure of process.
This was the process.
This is now an authoritarian government.
Not because of its rhetoric.
Not because of its ideology.
But because of its operational behavior.
It kills citizens on camera.
It lies immediately.
It blocks investigators.
It withholds officer identities.
It seizes evidence.
It announces its own innocence.
It smears the dead.
It dares the public to stop it.
That is not drift.
That is consolidation.
And this is why Alex Pretti will not be the last.
Because something has snapped inside this government. Because something has broken inside the men it sends into American streets with guns, masks, and political permission to do whatever they want.
This is what it looks like when a violent system discovers it can kill in public, lie about it, block investigators, smear the dead, and suffer no consequences. This is what it looks like when power realizes there is no line anymore.
Not unlike a serial killer who realizes after his first murder that no one is coming to stop him, this regime has now learned the most dangerous lesson a government can learn: that it can execute civilians in the street and nothing will happen to it.
They enjoyed the first one.
They enjoyed the lies that followed.
They enjoyed watching their base cheer it.
They enjoyed watching the media hedge.
They enjoyed watching Congress do nothing.
They enjoyed discovering there was no real penalty at all.
So they did it again.
And now they know they can keep doing it.
This is no longer about enforcement.
It is no longer about immigration.
It is no longer about law and order.
It is about domination.
It is about terror.
Once a state crosses the line into open, consequence-free killing, it does not step back on its own. It escalates. It repeats. It looks for the next body to make the last one feel normal.
Alex Pretti was not a mistake.
He was a proof of concept.
Less than three weeks earlier, federal immigration officers shot and killed another person in Minneapolis during a separate enforcement operation, followed by the same pattern of official lies and obstruction.
Two citizens.
Two executions.
Same city.
Same federal force.
Same cover-up.
If the Gestapo officers truly believed Alex Pretti was a threat, then they had already neutralized that threat when they took his gun. If they truly feared for their lives, then firing additional shots into a body that video shows was no longer moving makes no operational sense. If this was truly a lawful use of force, then there would be no reason to block investigators, destroy evidence, or lie to the public within hours of the killing. And if none of those explanations hold, then the only remaining explanation is the one we are not supposed to say out loud.
Here is the one defining paragraph that makes the term Federal Gestapo inescapable rather than rhetorical:
A political police force is defined not by uniforms or slogans but by behavior. It operates without meaningful warrants. It conceals the identities of its officers. It treats civilian observation as a threat. It suppresses filming. It blocks independent investigations. It lies in coordination with the executive branch. It smears the dead. It declares its own innocence. It operates above local law. It enforces ideological policy rather than neutral statute. It uses terror as a compliance tool. By every functional definition used in history, that is what is now operating in American streets. Calling it “law enforcement” is no longer descriptive. It is protective euphemism.
This is why masked officers now operate in American cities without warrants, without identification, and without accountability. This is why five-year-olds have been detained, six-month-old babies have been hospitalized after tear gas exposure, and now a VA nurse has been executed in the street for filming state violence.
There is no reform phase coming.
There is no accountability phase coming.
There is no internal correction phase coming.
They do not want this to end.
They want people afraid to film them.
They want people afraid to protest.
They want people afraid to carry lawfully.
They want people afraid to intervene.
They want people afraid to be near them at all.
That is the point.
Pretti’s parents, Susan and Michael Pretti, issued a statement that stripped away every last lie the administration tried to tell.
“Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital,” they wrote. “His last thought and act was to protect a woman. The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked. He had his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down, all while being pepper sprayed.”
They asked only one thing.
“Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.”
Alex Pretti was a citizen.
A nurse.
A son.
A legal observer.
A man holding a phone.
A man trying to help a woman the state had just assaulted.
He was executed by the state.
This will not stop on its own.
It will not soften.
It will not self-correct.
And it will not spare people who think their citizenship, their job, their compliance, or their politics will protect them.
That belief died on the pavement in Minneapolis.
*Tony Pentimalli is a political analyst and commentator fighting for democracy, economic justice, and social equity. Follow him for sharp analysis and hard-hitting critiques on Facebook and BlueSky
@tonywriteshere.bsky.social
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